by Anne R. Allen
Recently, a blog reader asked me why readers dislike it when the POV character dies at the end of chapter one, when most TV cop shows start with the victim being murdered — and nobody complains.
As I said in my blogpost on 8 Ways Not to Start a Novel: “This classic opener for TV cop shows doesn’t work to start a novel, because readers identify with the first character they meet in a book, and if you kill off that character immediately, readers feel betrayed.”
But, as our blog reader asked, why is that? Why do they identify with a character in a novel more than one in a TV show or movie?
I had to cogitate on that for a while. I’ve been mulling over that question myself. Recently, I read a mystery where the protagonist-sleuth turned out to be the murderer. I felt I’d been tricked. When the novelist has lied, leading us to believe the POV character is the novel’s main protagonist, like in the TV cop show opener, or the POV character is pretending (to the reader) to try to solve a murder they actually committed, we feel cheated. The author is lying by omission.
But would we feel the same way if the story had been a movie?
Probably not. Look at the popularity of films like The Usual Suspects, when you find out one of the “good guys” is really the bad guy everybody’s looking for. People ate it up.
Why a New Novelist Might Want to Imitate a Screenwriter
Most of us who have grown up in the industrialized world learned storytelling from screenplays as well as books. Many younger people were exposed to much more TV and film than written word storytelling in their formative years.
This hardwired certain storytelling tropes to our brains. So when we start out we may try to tell stories using screenwriter tools, not the tools of a novelist. I know I did. My teenaged stories read like plays.
That doesn’t mean we should spend endless pages on description, but a novel needs a lot more description of characters and setting than a screenplay. And it can have plenty of internal monologue. No voice-over required.
Why Does Withholding Information Work in a Film, but Not a Novel?
My answer to the blog reader who asked me that question was this: actors.
Then: directors, lighting designers, sound engineers, composers, costumers, film editors, etc. — all those people influence the way we feel about characters in film. A film is a team endeavor. Also — a film is something a viewer sees from outside the creative process. The viewer is not on the “team.”
This is what I realized: A novel is an intimate experience between only two people: the writer and the reader.
The reader’s imagination does a lot of creative work in experiencing a novel. If the author sets a scene in a castle, every reader has an image of a castle in their heads they bring to the story. In a film there’s a crew of location people and set designers to do that job.
With a film, you’re a passive viewer. (That’s why they say watching TV is harmful for people with depression, but reading books is not.)
Because the writer/reader relationship is so intimate with a novel, the reader hates being tricked. It feels as if a trusted friend has been lying.
But when you’re a viewer, on the outside looking in, you have lots of signs and signals that this situation is about to change. Music, lighting, setting, facial expressions, etc. can show the viewer they’re not on solid ground. They know things are not to be taken at face value.
We don’t need that element of trust between screenwriter and viewer we have between novelist and reader because there are so many other creative minds working in between.
What about Unreliable Narrators?
Isn’t that trust broken by an unreliable narrator like the mendacious POV characters in Gone, Girl? What about that Girl on the Train who narrates the story but is too drunk and in denial to know what’s really going on?
Are those books violating the reader/writer bond?
Some people think so. Not everybody was happy with those books. If you check Amazon’s 1000’s of one-star reviews on those books, disappointed readers mostly say they didn’t like the characters: “too angry and unlikable” (Gone Girl) and “the weakest people you’ll ever meet.” (The Girl on the Train.)
Those readers didn’t like the characters mostly because they deceived the reader. Another reviewer called The Girl on the Train “bleak, and deceitfully constructed.”
A whole lot of other readers, of course, adored these books and made them tremendous bestsellers. I read somewhere that Paula Hawkins, who wrote The Girl in the Train, is now richer than J.K. Rowling.
So I’d never tell anybody to avoid the unreliable narrator. Personally, I enjoy those books, because I have fun reading between the lines. It’s like playing a game with the author.
You still have the close reader-writer bond, but the author is challenging the reader to a game, rather than telling a straightforward story.
Other readers may dislike the author for it, because they don’t read to play games. If you write this kind of thriller, brace yourself for some nasty one-stars. But you might cry all the way to the bank.
Does a Comic Narrator Betray the Trust Between Novelist and Reader?
My own heroine, Camilla Randall, often has a skewed take on things, and I enjoy showing things through her over-privileged (but very polite) eyes. After all, I’m writing humor. But not everybody gets it. Some people feel betrayed because she’s not the reader’s idealized self. She’s more like Lucy Arnaz in I Love Lucy than Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games.
Should comic characters stay on the screen and keep out of novels?
Some people think so, and I have the angry reviews to show it. But it’s good to remember the first novels were comedies. The reader was not supposed to see himself as Don Quixote, Tom Jones, Gulliver, or Candide.
In telling a story through Camilla’s POV, I’m not tricking anybody on purpose to play a game the way Paula Hawkins and Gillian Flynn did. But I do expect a reader to “read between the lines” and see that Camilla’s take on things may not always be correct. I think there’s fun in feeling smarter than the protagonist. Unfortunately, not everybody does, so I have to weather those one-star reviews calling Camilla a “brand slut” and an “entitled b***h.”
There will always be readers who aren’t comfortable with humor in a book the way they are with humor on the screen, when they can feel more detached. They feel a novel is too intimate for jokes. Obviously, those people aren’t my audience. We need to know who we’re writing for.
Starting with a Doomed POV Character
So let’s get back to that standard TV mystery opener. The novel begins with a (usually sympathetic) POV character who is summarily dispatched by the end of chapter one. Why does this make more readers unhappy than an unreliable narrator does?
I think it’s because it feels like bait-and-switch. The author has promised one person’s story and then jerked away to another story altogether. Also, the reader has just made a friend — and she may even see that character as a stand-in for herself — and suddenly that friend/self is gone.
A Novelist Doesn’t Have to Depend on Dialogue
It’s important to remember that novelists don’t have to convey information with dialogue the way screenwriters do. In fact, dialogue can be spare and carry a lot of subtext in a novel, because the author has total control over the information given to the reader via other means.
One of the most common problems with newbie writing these days is too much dialogue and not enough action or inner monologue. This is partly because people tend to misinterpret “show don’t tell,” but also because of those TV shows that created our earliest ideas of storytelling. (See my post Do Your Characters Talk Too Much?)
Write For One Ideal Reader
I’ve read the following advice, but I can’t remember where: don’t write for everybody; write for one person. I think this is a great tip. Write your book for your ideal reader, not the general population. Because you’re going to have an intimate experience with that reader.
Aim at the person who will enjoy the book the most. Screenwriters have to speak to a director, the actors, the crew, etc. before their vision can reach the audience. The novelist only has to speak to that ideal reader. Think of that person as your friend. Don’t try to bamboozle or dazzle or show off. Tell your story honestly to that person.
Embrace Your Power
A screenwriter is limited by many, many things, and may hardly recognize the final product when it appears on the screen. But novelists have control of everything we survey.
Want to lose that castle and put the scene in a goat pen instead? Easy-peasy. Decide you need to get rid of that wimpy best friend character? Delete and she’s gone, and you don’t have to worry about the actress being the producer’s niece. Freedom!
So there are a few things you can’t do, like killing off a POV character in chapter one, or reader-feeder As-You-Know-Bob dialogue, but I think the trade-off is a fair one. Of course, if you still find it tough to write for that one reader, and your story unspools in dialogue, you just may be a screenwriter or playwright, and that’s good too. 🙂
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) July 2, 2023
What about you, scriveners? Are you annoyed when the POV character gets bumped off in chapter one? Do you feel there’s more intimacy between a novelist and reader than there is between a screenwriter and viewer? How about comedy? Should fiction characters not be silly? Do you prefer characters in books to be like you?
BOOKS OF THE WEEK
FREE for the Fourth!!
Yes, this wonderful anthology presenting 10 short mystery stories will be FREE at Amazon for the holiday weekend. Buy the ebook from Amazon on July 3, 4, and 5 and it will be 100% FREE!
The new mystery anthology from Thalia Press, which includes a fun Camilla story called “Cozy Cottage for Rent,” now available for pre-order.
All the stories come from established authors of a mystery series, and gives you a glimpse of the main characters and setting of each series.
A perfect beach read!
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featured image by Geralt for Pixabay
Thank you. PS. I loved Gone Girl.
Ellen–Me too. Although I understand why some people didn’t.
Hey Anne,
I love your novels-are-an-intimate experience argument. Absolutely. The relationship between author & reader hasn’t been looked into enough. Or appreciated enough. Thanks for this piece.
CS–I think this is why marketers think we should have newsletters and “make friends” with our readers. But I’m not sure that “intimacy” can continue outside of the book. It’s something that happens inside the magic of story.
I love your answer as to “why” a screenplay and a novel are different because the writer/reader relationship is and intimate one and the reader’s imagination does a lot of creative work in experiencing a novel. That makes so much sense to me. And the fact that a movie has so many people working together to pull it off, it makes sense that the guidelines for writing a screenplay and writing a novel are inherently very different because only one person is writing a book, generally speaking. Thank you.
Patricia–Exactly! Nothing comes between the writer’s vision and what the reader sees. It’s a two-person contract.
“A novel is an intimate experience between only two people: the writer and the reader.” Well put, Anne. I’ll borrow that for my quote collection, if you don’t mind. Re: Ideal Reader. I first encountered that idea in Stephen King’s must-read On Writing. I’m not sure if that’s a King original, but I borrowed that one, too. Happy Sunday top you and to Ruth!
Garry–I can believe the Ideal Reader idea came from Stephen King. On Writing is one of the best books ever for writers. He needed to write for his ideal reader, since not everybody loves horror so he may have discovered it from examining his own experience. And oh, yes, you may quote away. 🙂
BTW, “top” is a typo. Should be “to” 🙂
Garry–And top o’ the Sunday to you, too! 🙂
Fessing up: I hated Gone Girl. How I would put it: I don’t read to be part of an author’s ‘experiment’. Agatha Christie did something very similar in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and was condemned by all her contemporaries. At the time, it was interpreted as ‘cheating’ – grin. I guess that’s it. I don’t like to feel the author is trying to cheat me. It feels like contempt. But yes, I know some people loved those books, and my take has always been, that’s just fine. It’s terrific people are still reading. I tell my students, I don’t care what you read! Just keep reading, please!!
Melodie–You’re not alone. Most of my writer friends disliked Gone, Girl. It does feel like cheating if you haven’t been warned. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it if I hadn’t had a bunch of warnings and I knew it was going to be a game. The main objection to all of the unreliable narrator books is there’s nobody to like. Everybody turns out to be horrible. And that is a problem. Most of us don’t like reading about a bunch of nasty people any more than we want to spend time with nasty people in real life. I feel the same way about film and TV. That’s why I’m one of the few people who didn’t love Succession. But I’m not sure all those people would love Succession in book form.
Fascinating post, Anne — as always. :O)
I think viewers have been ‘trained’ to accept the structure of short-form visual venues. We are lured into thinking of the cop show as an exercise in critical thinking. We follow the sleuth in unwinding the killing event and celebrate when we ID the killer. People like puzzles and live for that vicarious thrill in ‘solving’ puzzles. We like being challenged and bond with characters like Adrian Monk and one-eyed Columbo. We also like having our own sleuthing abilities confirmed when our conclusions match the sleuth hero’s.
I think a season/year(s) worth of cop shows might compare with a novel. Time spent with the characters might allow such a comparison. This is why viewers go apey when a long-term, main character of a cop show is replaced or killed off. You’d-a thought the world was ending when Leroy Jethro Gibbs of NCIS was eased from the show, per audience reactions.
Also, I believe it’s true that readers can differ in personality and creative drive than strict movie/tv viewers. I consider video venues something to engage with when I want to be ‘entertained’. With visual stimulation, the brain is engaged in a different way to reading a book. The vicarious nature of video allows me to interact with it at a different level. Reading offers both distance and intimacy which is all our own — ‘we’ create the body language, ‘we’ create the scenery, ‘we’ create the emotions.
Obviously, this post has inspired me — and I have already sent links to current and past authors I’ve worked with — it just might stretch their learning into new dimensions, eh?
Thanks a mil, Anne!
Enjoy a safe 4th — I’m stuffing my wiener dog, Buster, with calming chewies… :O)))
Maria
Maria–Yes! TV shows used to be stand-alones, but now each episode is like a chapter of a book. Not just with cop shows. Most comedies and dramas work that way too. But it’s the actors the viewers are attached to and hate to lose–not the screenwriters. So it’s not so much a writer’s medium.
Thanks for sharing and I hope you can keep Buster safe on the 4th.
Excellent insights, Anne, as always. You may have hit on the reason why writing screenplays never appealed to me. Although I value my critique and beta reading collaborators, I prefer the one-on-one relationship with a reader. But screenplays are often sausage making. What it starts with bears no resemblance to the finished product.
Not say if a producer offered nice option money, I’d turn it down. For six-figures, my words become all theirs. 😉
Debbie–Filmmaking is a bit like making sausage. I did background work back in the 80s (as a so-called “extra”), and I was amazed at how much movie making involves waiting around doing nothing. So many writers sell their novels to film and don’t recognize the final product. John Updike said he’d basically been paid a lot of money for the title of The Witches of Eastwick, because they didn’t use anything but the title. And when Catherine Ryan Hyde met the star for the film adaptation of her novel Pay it Forward, which had a Black protagonist, she couldn’t help reminding Kevin Spacey that he’s a White guy.
Great post, Anne. Really great.
“The reader was not supposed to see himself as Don Quixote, Tom Jones, Gulliver, or Candide.” Especially not Candide!
But it was pointed out to me in college, or maybe even high school, that it can be okay for a narrator, at least in a short story, to be unreliable. “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” were two examples. But again, I think you’re right. I doubt that unreliability could hold for a novel-length piece.
Fred–Those “Girl” novels have unreliable narrators and are super-popular. As I say, I think the readers decided they wanted to engage in a game with the author. They still trusted her to tell a story that makes sense. It’s true that a lot of “tricks” in fiction work better in short stories.
Wonderful article, Anne. Like others have mentioned, I love this insight: “A novel is an intimate experience between only two people: the writer and the reader.”
Kay–I think that’s an important concept for writers to keep in mind as they write. Somebody is going to be reading this in their cozy chair some evening and they’re going to be 100% trusting of the author to tell a good story. So don’t trick that reader!
I made this classic mistake in the beginning.
Traci–You are not alone! I can’t tell you how many newbie manuscripts I’ve read that start this way.
I’m both a playwright and a novelist, which is not quite as great a distance as between a novel or a screenplay. However, this blog clarified the difference I experience when writing. When moving between formats I feel similar to how an actor feels when changing hats to portray a different character. Thanks so much for cogitating on this … very helpful.
Lola–I have a theater background, too. I was an actor and director for many years. I think the difference between writing for the two venues is like taking off a director hat and becoming the actor who is personally interacting with that audience. It was always amazing to me how a high energy audience could make aa comedy rip-roaring fun, and a low-energy audience could turn the same play into a tragedy. There is that interaction we have in a novel, but the playwright and director don’t have much to do with it.
For me there’s a huge difference between lying to or fooling the reader and not telling all at the beginning, but scattering little bread crumbs of clues so that when the reveal occurs (before the end of the book–it should not be the main plot point) the reader is pleased that they have figured out what was revealed because they are clever. I’m trying to achieve that in my own WIP.
Ruchama–Scattering clues is great. And if those clues are about any character but the protagonist, readers are delighted. But if those clues are hinting that the protagonist is untrustworthy and a liar, some readers won’t care how many clues there are. They want the sleuth to be their friend. But, as I said, books like Gone, Girl, (which has lots of clues) have been very successful, even though they make some readers furious.
I agree, Melodie, I found it interesting what Agatha Christie did in Roger Ackroyd, but also a bit annoying. And I hated how Hugh Howie’s POV characters die in Wool. And though I write crime I don’t actually like to see a character’s death from within their POV – I find it stressful. If the author wants to start with the death, I’d rather it was told more from an omniscient viewpoint. I’m figuring out that these are just my preferences and there will always be someone who likes what I don’t. Thanks for the thought-starter, Anne.
Belinda–I think you’re right that it’s all about point of view. We believe Dr. Sheppard in Roger Ackroyd, so we’re annoyed when he lies. But nowhere near as annoyed as we’d be if it turned out Poirot had been the culprit. In the “Girl” novels, it is the person who appears to be the #1 protagonist who turns out to be lying–and there’s no sleuth hero. Still, that’s not as devastating as killing off the POV character in chapter one. I agree that generally POV characters should be off-limits. There are other ways to create a plot twist. 🙂 We need to offer a trusting relationship with the reader, and creating an untrustworthy protagonist is not a good way to do it.
Interesting take although IMHO, surprised others haven’t pointed out the frequent difference…tv shows and movies have automatic 3rd person fixed PoV while most books are in the head of the narrator or 3rd person omniscient. If opening character dies in book, PoV has to shift while camera for TV remains the same.
Books CAN do it but they have to do it well for it to work…
Paul–Now I’d say that the camera is an omniscient POV and most books are 3rd person limited. But as you point out–there’s the problem. The reader thinks they’ve met the character who is going to tell the story, but suddenly that narrator is gone and you need to get to know another narrative voice. That’s annoying to most readers.
I love this post. It makes the difference between writing for screen and writing a novel very plain. Thank you.
VM–Thanks! I’m glad I made it clear.
The opening prologue in fantasy often shows characters that are not main characters or that die – see for example the massively famous Game of Thrones intro, for example, by George RR Martin. I think this is changing, and younger readers in particular do not have this expectation.
Sarah–The classic high fantasy prologue is different. It’s usually told in a history-book or storyteller voice, and the reader isn’t in the head of the people who die. That makes a huge difference. It’s when the reader gets to know the character personally that they resent losing that character. In a prologue, people expect a more detached kind of storytelling.
This is such great advice, Anne. Months ago, I bought the new release from a one-click author of mine. The opening gripped me. Terrified MC in some cell-like dungeon with a serial killer. I could not flip pages fast enough. And then, in chapter two, the MC is waking up in the passenger seat of a car. I was so pissed off about the dream sequence I stopped reading. Done. One of my one-click authors betrayed me in the worst possible way — with it-was-all-a-dream bull. I still haven’t gone back to that book because every time I try, I get all pissed off again.
Sue–“It was all a dream” is the worst writer cop-out ever. I think the writers of Dallas put what should have been the final kibosh on that trope back in the ’80s. That experience would be enough to make me give up on a writer. I’m with you.
Meant to add: If the book was a net-streaming series or movie, it wouldn’t bother me as much. I still don’t like it, but I’d keep watching.
Sue–It’s still a schlocky opener IMO. I just saw one recently and decided not to keep watching.
There is always an outlier that proves that something can be done. Agatha Christie did in THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD in which the narrator was the murderer. You will still be criticised for it. She was and still is, years after her death. I would label it as ‘do not try this at home.’
JR–Roger Ackroyd is another reason not to use that trick on the contemporary reader. Mysteries have been there, done that. It’s like trying to write something with the twist ending of The 6th Sense. “Been there, M. Night Shyamalan’s done that.”
I must disagree because I have to. I may regret that statement down the line, but I am sticking with it at the moment. One of my old books is being made into a film and I am going to be one of the screen writers. I have never done this before but I have written a “Staged play” and so I am hoping that I am up to the task. I am often told off by writing caches etc. that I use far too much dialogue, but I am hoping that will be an asset for a change.
Ray–I’m not saying novelists can’t write screenplays or vice versa. I’m saying they have to approach the task in a different way. A novelist has to do the job of the costume designer, set designer, gaffer, director, etc, etc. Congrats on optioning your book for film. Good dialogue is the key! But be careful about crossing picket lines. Writers are on strike for some very good reasons, and if you get caught being a scab, that could hurt your career in the long run.